Placing & Admission to AIM

Vane Holdings PLC
02 June 2004


                               VANE Holdings plc

                    Placing and Admission to Trading on AIM

VANE Holdings plc ('VANE' or 'the Company'), a mineral exploration and
development company, began its first day of trading today on the AIM. The
Company has raised £3.705m via a placing at 11p per share and at the placing
price has a market capitalisation of approximately £16.07m. Seymour Pierce is
acting as both nominated adviser and broker.

Admission and Placing Statistics:

Placing price                                                                11p
Number of existing Ordinary Shares                                   112,462,000
Number of Placing Shares                                              33,681,823
Placing Shares as a percentage of enlarged issued share capital           23.05%
Number of Ordinary Shares in issue on Admission                      146,143,823
Estimated net proceeds of the Placing to be received by the Company   £3,191,000
Market capitalisation following the Placing at the Placing Price     £16,075,820

VANE is focused on defining and developing prospective mineral projects and
benefits from a highly qualified and experienced management team with a proven
track record in exploration and development. The Company is ideally placed to
capitalise on project acquisition opportunities, as it has negotiated access to
a 7,000+ file global exploration database, excluding Indonesia, from US mining
group Freeport-McMoRan, one of the world's largest producers of copper and gold.

To date approximately 75% of Freeport's files have been reviewed and several
exciting potential prospects have been identified and an option over mineral
rights at a property in Guadalcazar, Mexico, has been obtained.

Guadalcazar is an early stage exploration property consisting of a large newly
recognised hydrothermal gold system having the potential to define a large gold
deposit. Revenues from the Company's other project, Diablito, are expected to
help fund the development of Guadalcazar and other exploration projects, thereby
creating an exploration company with cash flow.

VANE owns 100% of the mineral rights to the Diablito Project. Diablito is an
advanced high-grade precious metal vein deposit located in the State of Nayarit,
west-central Mexico, containing economic values of gold and silver. VANE plans
to put the Diablito prospect into production within 6 months in order to finance
exploration costs elsewhere. The Directors believe that the simplicity of the
mining process, and the Company's ability to vary the production rate, makes
this an achievable objective.

VANE was co-founded by CEO Steven Van Nort, who was previously Senior
Vice-President of exploration-metals at Freeport McMoRan until 2000. The Board
also includes L. Clark Arnold as Director of Geology, who participated in the
development and implementation of a statistically based method of porphyry
copper prospecting which eventually led to two major discoveries: The Escondida
mine in Chile, believed to be the world's largest copper deposit, and the Santa
Cruz deposit in Arizona. Matthew Idiens, formerly a Fund Manager for Laing and
Cruickshank Investment Management, is an Executive Director and Robert Jeffcock,
who brings many years' of experience raising funds within the resources sector,
and David Ingmire are Non-Executive Directors. The Non-Executive Chairman is
Michael Spriggs, who has 27 years of mining sector experience having worked as
an exploration geologist for Anglo American, Falconbridge and Rio Tinto before
joining the SG Warburg mining team.

Steven Van Nort, CEO of VANE, comments 'We believe that VANE offers the upside
of an exploration company, with the comfort that we will be generating cash flow
from our first producing asset in the near term. The placing has enabled us to
raise money in order to bring Diablito into production, which will help us to
capitalise on some of the other exciting opportunities that are currently under
review.'

- Ends -

For further information, please contact:

VANE Holdings plc    Seymour Pierce               Parkgreen Communications
Matthew C. Idiens    Jonathan Guy/Jeremy Porter   Justine Howarth/Cathy Malins
[phone]     [phone]             [phone]

www.VANEminerals.com



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